Heather Leson

I activate global open source communities to create, make, train, and implement great technology/social entrepreneurship projects. With over 15 years career experience, I offer excellence in partnership relationships, community management, technical incident management, software life-cycle development, customer care, and Internet communications. As the President of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, I focus on strategic planning, fundraising and community engagement. Recently, I also joined the Board of Directors for PeaceGeeks. Some of my expertise includes partnership management, training staff/communities, delivering complex projects, running global digital and in person workshops/events, public speaking, building partnerships, and creating concise documentation. As a technical communicator, I collaborate with customers (users), technical teams, and management to build a common language. Some previous public speaking events: CSR GCC (Abu Dhabi: April 2015) Stanford University - Ethics of Data Conference (Palo Alto: September 2014) IEEE Humanitarian Technology Conference (Montreal QC: May 2014) Go Open Data Keynote (Toronto ON: May 2014) OSCON: Become a Digital Humanitarian (Portland, USA: July 2013) Speak Up Global (Transparency International) (Berlin, Germany: March 2013) DFAIT Canadian Government and Digital volunteer Simulation (Ottawa, ON: March 2013) Google Big Tent (Sendai, Japan: July 2012) TedxSilkRoad (Istanbul,Turkey: April 2012) UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador’s Retreat (San Francisco, USA: February 2012) (See full list: http://textontechs.com/portfolio/)